English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.Everitt, Graham
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English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.
Everitt, Graham
Caricature -- Great Britain; Illustration of books -- Great Britain -- 19th century
In looking at these quaint designs, the mind of any one possessed of any
imagination at all cannot fail to be impressed with a sense of the
original train of thought which must have characterized the man who
could conceive and realize them. How appropriately and admirably, even
in trivial matters, the details of the design are worked out! If the
reader will refer to the etching in "St. James'," where the sergeant
places the boot of his master, the Duke of Marlborough, on a map of
Flanders, he will at once see what we mean. The action is accidental;
and yet where could the boot have been placed with greater propriety?
for surely if any country was under the heel of the great English
captain, it was Flanders. Nothing to equal these designs are ever seen
in these days, perhaps nothing like them will ever be seen again. There
are many excellent comic designs produced by our artists of to-day; but
with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Caldicott and Colonel Seccombe, they
lack _character_. You pass them by, and straightway forget them. Not so
with these admirable little designs; you turn to them again and again,
and each time with a refreshing sense of pleasure. Herein seems to lie
the power of true genius--that its productions give not only a sense of
freshness and delight, but that the sensation so conveyed will not die.
There are people, I believe, on whom they produce no such impression;
such people, as regards comic art, are for all practical purposes "dry
bones," and to dry bones such as these the pencil of "honest George"
will appeal in vain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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